Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is add web content consistently to automatically begin bringing new traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will discuss the configuration phase of this process. You will learn what makes an expertly configured WordPress site different than a professionally configured site. You will also learn what kind of work needs to be done to make sure that when all is fully configured, you can automatically bring new traffic just by consistently adding web content on your site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive worldwide and are exploring any advantage they believe will increase their competitiveness online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge advantage over other competitors. An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a significant competitive advantage from the word “go”.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to explain the key difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does a whole lot more work go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
To illustrate this here is a little story.
Knowing Where To Tap
All is moving along in the gizmo-making assembly line when everything comes to a sudden stop.
No one can figure out what’s wrong and so the manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert walks immediately to the control box. After staring silently at the schematics for about 3 minutes or less, the expert then takes out a little hammer from his utility belt and makes a gentle tap about 2 inches from the bottom-left side of the control unit.
Immediately, the machinery springs to life once more.
The plant manager is greatly overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a request for payment of services rendered totalling $5,000.
Puzzled and confused, the factory manager rings the expert. Why have they had been charged such a ridiculously high fee for less than 5 minutes work? He promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic consistently to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the equipment stopped functioning and no one in the business had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for having spent years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a website set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other online properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
While the solution to many challenges may seem ridiculously simple once it’s been implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than simply installing a website and configuring a few settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which services you need to set up to achieve specific results
- Which settings need to be configured to make sure things will work as planned, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite involved and complicated. It’s not just about installing a piece of software, configuring some settings in your admin area or clicking a button … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web hosting server, your website, and a number of external sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram showing the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved in more detail.
Web Server Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your site may attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like implementing server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to configure a number of external sites and services.
Integration With External Sites
The basic idea of choosing external sites is that all of your content should be posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, radiate outwards to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external sites into your setup, content with links pointing back to your site will get automatically posted to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social networks, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content and site will be given additional exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of these sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your site’s settings to save time and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmasters)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with important information, SEO tools and reports about your website.
Once your account and site data are set up, this information can be used with traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, you can add your account information to WordPress using a plugin and send data instantly to other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account and site details with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, this information can be used with traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to build a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your automated web traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site)
You will need your social media and social bookmarking accounts set up before you can integrate these with your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts and pages set up with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up accounts with and syndicate your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(You can syndicate your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging technology platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your account.
There are various solutions you can incorporate into your traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As described in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services section
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of update services to this section and WordPress will do the rest …
(WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading
This section affects how your content gets seen by visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website to view the rest of the content from excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as your traffic system is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to automatically notify various update services whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion Settings
Although this section is mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs linked to from your posts, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow your site to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the ways your site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on setting up permalinks, go here: Setting Up WordPress Permalinks
Configuring Settings – WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No website is immune from cyber attacks.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
Go here for more information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(SEO plugins help increase traffic by improving your site’s ability to rank better in search engines)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find and index, it also lets you specify how to present your content to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing features to your site easily using free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with WordPress plugins.
Most social share plugins let you choose which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring Settings – WordPress Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, some themes also include built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes can be configured for better traffic results)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your website is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you do business online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your website stays compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, see this article:
Categories & Tags
WordPress tags & post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your website.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your pages.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s tags and categories should be reviewed and set up during the Website Planning Stage.
When looking at ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications discover your online content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Although search engines like Google can index your site just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – Don’t Lose Traffic!
When visitors enter the wrong web address or click on links pointing to pages on your website that no longer exist, they are presented with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 Not Found page) …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 Not Found error page can be configured to funnel visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your website expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do to automatically drive more traffic is post fresh content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes some web professionals a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is covered in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Part 3
To continue reading this article, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive tutorial series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively and drive traffic sustainably using a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy to implement.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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